2012 Quincy Half Marathon

Quincy Half Marathon 3/18/12

chip time: 1:40:42 (PR by almost 11 minutes!)

247/1426 overall finishers

I showed up to this race with my game face on. I had decided in my mind that there was absolutely no way I wasn’t going to PR. I was physically strong, I was mentally ready. All that was left was hoping the running stars aligned as far as weather, course, and unforeseen things like stomach issues, etc.

But let’s back up. The night before I drove down to Mass to stay with the awesome Colleen Fit Bee, who lives about 20 minutes from the start (I myself, about 2 hours without traffic). She was a wonderful hostess. I slept well the night before the race. I ate my pre-race breakfast (always a Chocolate Mint Cliff Builder’s bar and an energy drink. Hey, it works for me). We drove out to Quincy High School to pick up our bibs (small race, just over 1400 finishers), use indoor, flushing bathrooms (score!) and wait around in the heated gym/cafeteria. It was a little chilly and windy at the start, but the sun was out.

Oddly, I never felt nervous before the race. I was just ready to run in every sense of the word.

The horn sounded marking the start of the race, and run is exactly what I did.

mile 1 – 8:12 mile 2 – 7:36 mile 3 – 7:46 mile 4 -7:40

The first mile was my slowest as I settled into my pace and out from behind some slower runners. Mile 2 & 3 were hard. They are almost always the hardest miles of any distance race for me, as my body is shocked into the idea that yeah, we are going for a long run. I had gone into this race hoping for a 1:49:00, an average pace of 8:18. But a pace in the mid 7’s felt alright, so I stuck with it. I didn’t feel like I was overreaching, my breathing was steady and my legs felt good, but I did worry if I was going out too fast. Around mile 4 I saw Colleen and told her I was trying to bank as much time as I could.

mile 5 – 7:37 mile 6 – 7:55 mile 7 – 7:40 mile 8 – 7:37

The course was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the route went right along the ocean. I am a surfer girl through and through, but there is something so different about the New England coastline. But beauty aside, one of the pitfalls of running right next to the shore is the headwind. Around mile 5 we hit a huge hill (the first real hill) in a small neighborhood, did a complete turn around, went back down another hill, and bam, the headwinds hit. It was at this point the voices started to creep in. You know, the “voices” that say things like “this sucks. This is actually really hard. You should slow down so you don’t completely die. It’s not your fault there are headwinds. It just wasn’t meant to be today…”

I told the voices to shut the hell up, and powered forward.

It was also at this point that I would like to file my one and ONLY complaint with this race: parts of it were NOT closed off to traffic. Not only did a car come within inches of me, but I watched as a car FLEW past and literally grazed Colleen, a good 50 feet ahead of me. Seriously if she swung her arm slightly she would have bounced it off of their mirror. It was ridiculous, and it was coming from both directions (and so were the runners). I get that you can’t close off traffic 100%, but at least put up some sort of barriers or bright orange traffic cones even, to signal which lane is for runners and which is for traffic.

Once I hit mile 9 I knew I was basically 2/3 of the way done, it was no longer a matter of saving energy for the end. This was the end. I just had to hang in there.

But sneaky Quincy half marathon saved all of the hills for the last 1/3 of the race.

My legs burned on those darn hills. I did my best to maintain whatever kind of pace I could, and was CERTAIN to catch up with the down hills. God didn’t give me these long legs to shuffle down hills, I hammered down them as fast as I could. It was around mile 10 that I started doing the math. You know, if I run _____ pace for the next 3.1 miles I can finish in x:xx:xx. Anyone who has tried to do math at this point of a race knows it’s NOT easy. Something about the blood being diverted from your brain to your legs, lungs, and heart and converting pace to overall finishing minutes/seconds…needless to say it’s not easy, but it is certainly distracting.

I dug deep. I thought of all of the things the past few days, weeks, months, year that have hurt me, and I thought of how much easier this physical pain was. Heck, I welcomed it. I thought of how hard I have been training in the gym, how much stronger I have become. I am not weak. I would not give up. I rounded a corner to see one of the best surprises ever: a downhill to the finish line. I put everything I had left into my legs and I ran, hard. There was one point, maybe 100 yards from the finish, where I thought, I’m either going to pass out right here or I am going to finish strong. Adrenaline took over, and I crossed the finish line.

11 minute PR. 1:40:24. And you know what my first thought was? If I didn’t take that extra water break to fiddle with my GPS, I could have had a 1:39.

Is there no cure for this madness?

No really, I was ecstatic. Proud. Not just for my finishing time, but for the fact that I never once gave up on myself, something I used to do all too often.

I finally found some of my friends only to be bummed to find out they both took DNF’s. Proud of them for listening to their bodies though, so they could run another day and not sustain any serious injuries. And proud of another for setting a PR herself 🙂

So there you go. Quincy in a nutshell. Would I run this race again? Absolutely. Great course, beautiful town, awesome town/spectator support, great organization.

Awesome race, congrats to you!! Enjoy that post race high. I do the same thing after a half… wonder if I had just picked it up here or there, I could have been another minute faster. No wonder everyone thinks runners are crazy!

Awesome job!!! Killer PR!!! Thanks for sharing this – and thank you for giving this newbie the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel that one day I will run a whole race and successfully shut up every negative thought along the way 🙂

Thank you for sharing. I love reading your blog, it truly inspires me! I also ran the Quincy half on Sunday and PR’d by 23 minutes!! It was such an amazing feeling! Congrats on your PR and I love your new ink! Keep running 🙂

Way to bust that PR! I ran this race too at the last minute for fun. It was a beautiful course with so many awesome views and perfect weather =) I agree that they need traffic cones in some places…it did get unsafe at times.

Amazing Job Heather. You might also be interested in Running watches. You can can check on our website http://www.runningwatchreview.com on latest reviews on distance running watch, GPS running watch and Pulse watch that you will need in running. We will give you tips on choosing the watch of your dreams.

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Meet Heather

I'm Heather, mom of two, ACSM Certified Exercise Physiologist, and an overzealous athlete who cannot focus on a single discipline, so I train for all of them at the same time. When in doubt, I run...and then write about it. Read More…

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